She’s not backing down one bit. Leslie Jones opened up about being besieged by racist tweets during a Thursday, July 21, appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers and offered a powerful message for those who’ve trolled her on social media.
“You know, it was one of those type of things — the insults, what’s scary about the whole thing is that the insults didn’t hurt me. Unfortunately, I’m used to the insults,” the Ghostbusters actress, 48, told Seth Meyers. “That’s unfortunate, but what scared me was the injustice of a gang of people jumping against you for such a sick cause.”
“And it’s so mean. Like, it’s so gross and mean and unnecessary. So it was just like one of those things like, OK, if I hadn’t said anything, nobody would have ever knew about this,” she continued. “All those people still would have an account.”
As previously reported, the Saturday Night Live star called out racist Twitter users by posting their abhorrent messages on her Twitter feed on Monday, July 18.
“You know I’m gonna stop blocking so y’all can go through my feed yourself and see the bs. You won’t believe the evil. It’s f–king scary,” Jones wrote before retweeting a handful of the racist remarks she’s received.
“I have been called Apes, sent pics of their asses, even got a pic with semen on my face,” she explained. “I’m tryin to figure out what human means. I’m out.”
One user tweeted at the comedian: “SHE HAS NO STYLE SHE HAS NO GRACE THIS LESLIE (KONG) HAS A FUNNY FACE,” to which Jones responded, “So sad, these people have mothers and sisters and aunts. So f–king sickening.”
The incident inspired the Twitter hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ created in support of Jones. Several celebrities — such as Kristin Davis, Reese Witherspoon and Sherri Shepherd, among others — joined in on the movement and sent words of encouragement to the Top Five star.
During her chat with Meyers, 42, Jones said that she met with Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey to speak about the issue and revealed the company was more than willing to deactivate the accounts of those who used the social media platform to spread hate.
“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter,” the company said in a statement on July 20. “But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension.”
Twitter permanently suspended conservative writer and Breitbart.com tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who ignited a harassment campaign against Jones.
“We got a whole bunch of accounts taken off of Twitter, because it’s not right. It’s not right to gang up on nobody,” Jones shared on Thursday. “Hate speech and freedom of speech [are] two different things.”
Watch the video above.
